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      Political Instability Task Force Worldwide Atrocities Dataset

For the past few years the KEDS project has been collecting the data set
described below for the U.S. government-sponsored Political Instability
Task Force <http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/pitf/>. While this work, like
all of our efforts, has been unclassified, there were some contractual
ambiguities as to the conditions under which we could release the data.
These have been resolved, and the data are now available. We expect to
update the data file posted on this site every three months or so.

The current version covers January 1995 to July 2007 and includes 4,885
events. These data were coded using conventional human coding rather
than automated methods, although we do employ a couple of customized
filter programs to reduce the number of stories we need to look through.
Data are a zipped MS-Excel file; compressed file size is about 2 Mb; it
decompresses to about 6.5 Mb.

The following narrative describing the data is included at the request
of the sponsor:

?The Political Instability Task Force (PITF) Worldwide Atrocities
Dataset is a global dataset that describes, in quantitative terms, the
deliberate killing of non-combatant civilians in the context of a wider
political conflict. This data collection project, which is still
ongoing, is intended to advance efforts to understand and anticipate
atrocities, i.e., the deliberate use of lethal violence against
non-combatant civilians by actors engaged in a wider political or
military conflict. The practical objective of this project is to create
a dataset representing a reasonably systematic sample of atrocities
occurring worldwide in recent decades in order to: (1) enable the
development of statistical models that might be used to identify
countries vulnerable to the occurrence of atrocities or, if atrocities
are already occurring, to an escalation in their rate or intensity; and
(2) create a descriptive record that might be used by researchers with
an interest in particular countries or conflicts. The effective date of
data in this dataset is 1 January 1995 to the present date. Data are
updated monthly.

The research underlying the development of this dataset has been
conducted under the auspices of the Political Instability Task Force, a
body of distinguished scholars, supported by methodologists from Science
Applications International Corporation (SAIC), that forecasts and
explains state collapse and other significant internal political events
in countries worldwide for senior policymakers in the U.S. Government.
The research was conducted as part of an unclassified program funded by
the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency?s (CIA) Directorate of Intelligence
through a contract with SAIC. The data collected and published on this
Web site, and all statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in
the accompanying code book that guided the data collection effort, are
solely those of the authors and do not reflect the official positions of
the CIA or any other U.S. Government agency. Nothing in the contents
should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government
authentication or information or CIA endorsement of the authors' views.?

Download Political Instability Task Force Worldwide Atrocities Dataset
coding manual (.pdf)
<Atrocities.codebook.1.0B1.pdf>

Download Political Instability Task Force Worldwide Atrocities Dataset
data (.zip)
<pitf.world.19950101-20070731.xls.zip>


        Google Earth display of data

The .kml file provided below will create a Google Earth
<http://earth.google.com/> display of the data. The data itself is
stored on a server at the University of Kansas and you will need to be
connected to the internet to use this; you will also need the Google
Earth software installed on your machine.

Download Google Earth .kml file
<PITF_atrocities_remote.kml> for displaying data set (.kml)

Download perl program and ancillary files
<encode.PITF.ge.zip> for converting a tab-delimited version of data set into .kml records (.zip)

Download Google Earth program <http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html>

LAST UPDATED: 15 NOVEMBER 2007

